For over 15 years I have been looking at the world of marketing, advertising and public relations and seeing things a bit differently. I was not alone. Countless others also saw the real need for systemic changes, or dare I say reform, across the board. The fundamental challenge became that the broad concept of “the market” was not fair nor efficient – the ones with the power (and money) won, and they often won at the expense of other’s loss.

In May, I reviewed the proposed Federal Trade Commission guidelines that would ultimately affect and change how brands employ endorsements into their marketing, advertising, and communications programs.

Today, the Federal Trade Commission made good on its threat promise by releasing its final revisions to the guidance it gives advertisers on how to keep their endorsement and testimonial ads in line with the FTC Act. This amendment marks 29 years since The Guides were last updated in 1980.

If you’re dubbed a social media expert these days it’s almost like getting marked for professional death. It’s become even more popular to deny social media expertise as it has to claim faux expertise. Which means that the snake oiliest of the social media expert types have tried to give themselves a bit more oomph: they use the term consultant.

As Twitter adoption travels from the left to the right of Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations Bell Curve, mainstream consumer behavior gathers momentum, manifesting into influential and telling market indicators. This invaluable behavior and sentiment eventually becomes deafening and without actively monitoring and analyzing this movement, we miss opportunities to learn, grow, and help.

We need a prescribed lens into the real-time thoughts, observations, and experiences of real people, unfiltered, to make informed decisions and both lead and evolve along with our markets.

The Federal Trade Commission is seeking your input regarding future of news media in advance of its upcoming workshops. The FTC seeks to explore the digital impact on consumption behavior and its correlating effects on the the business of publishing and journalism.

The workshop will be held on December 1-2, 2009 and will consider a wide range of issues, such as Internet-related changes in advertising and the way people receive news, ideas for reducing costs and restructuring news organizations, potential for-profit and non-profit models for journalism, and the evolving competition among news organizations.

For the last year, I’ve served as a strategic advisor to PeopleBrowsr. While many of you may know PeopleBrowsr as a Web-based client for Twitter and other social networks, the real story is that over the past several months, we’ve quietly built a comprehensive foundation and supporting infrastructure for capturing, organizing, and analyzing data, sentiment, and corresponding activity to reveal the indicators, hotspots, opportunities and trends that define the Twitterverse and ultimately, business. As such, I’ve spent a great deal of time researching activity as it relates to many of the industries that I serve in order to help brands cultivate meaningful relationships while also evolving business services and practices based on actual intelligence.

Social Networks are among the most powerful examples of socialized media. They create a dynamic ecosystem that incubates and nurtures relationships between people and the content they create and share.

As these communities permeate and reshape our lifestyle and how we communicate with one another, we’re involuntarily forcing advertisers and marketers to rapidly evolve how they vie for our attention.

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ABOUT ME

Brian Solis is a digital analyst, anthropologist, and also a futurist. In his work at Altimeter Group, Solis studies the effects of disruptive technology on business and society. He is an avid keynote speaker and award-winning author who is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders in digital transformation.

His most recent book, What's the Future of Business: Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences (WTF), explores the landscape of connected consumerism and how business and customer relationships unfold in four distinct moments of truth. His previous book, The End of Business as Usual, explores the emergence of Generation-C, a new generation of customers and employees and how businesses must adapt to reach them. In 2009, Solis released Engage, which is regarded as the industry reference guide for businesses to market, sell and service in the social web.